The Family Business
by kellyofsmeg
Summary: Set during S1. A conversation between Dean and Sam on what is, was, and could have been when it comes to their life and their father as the brothers are on their year-long search for him. Warnings: Pro-John.


**The Family Business**

**by kellyofsmeg**

**Summary: Series 1. A conversation between Dean and Sam on what is, was, and could have been when it comes to their life and their father as the brothers are on their year-long search for him. Warnings: Pro-John.**

**Disclaimer:****_ Supernatural_**** is not mine.**

_Sometime during season one, between "Nightmare" and "Shadow"..._

Sam and Dean Winchester were idling in a deserted parking lot of a business complex, occupying some big wig Corporate Executive's extra wide parking spot beneath a lamp-post, to better to see their food. They'd stopped by a drive-thru for a quick bite, and Dean had elected to park n' eat so he could fully enjoy savoring his meal without the distraction of having to keep his eyes on the road and both hands on the steering wheel, or having to deal with Sam's bitchface when he didn't.

Sam pushed a crouton around with his fork, looking preoccupied.

"Something wrong with your leaves?" Dean asked thickly with his mouth full of burger, a line of ketchup dribbling down his chin.

"No, it's just..." Sam put his plastic salad carton down on the dash. "I was just wondering...what was Dad like, you know, before," he said, meaningfully.

Dean looked slightly taken aback. Gesturing with his greasy yellow-wrapped burger, he said, "You mean before...everything?"

Sam nodded. "If you could describe how Dad was before he was a hunter in one word, what would it be?"

Dean wiped his chin on the back of his hand, considering Sam's question. At last, he said, "He was fun," and took another bite of his burger.

_"__...Fun?" _Sam repeated skeptically. He'd heard a lot of words used to describe his father: obsessed, overbearing, stubborn, demanding, intense, unrelenting, strict and driven, to name some of the kinder ones...but never _fun_.

"Yeah," Dean choked, swallowing a bite so big it stuck as it went down. "Believe it or not, Sammy, Dad used to be a blast." He had a coughing fit as the blockage failed to pass smoothly down his esophagus.

"What do you mean, exactly—like, can you give me some examples?" Sam pressed, trying to imagine his father as anything other than a drill sergeant.

"Well, I only remember so much, Sammy...I wasn't even in kindergarten yet," Dean said hoarsely, taking a long sip from his straw for the dual purpose of stalling for time and clearing the obstruction from his throat.

"Tell me the things you do remember," Sam insisted.

"What—is this search for Dad making you all sentimental or something?" Dean smirked, still vying for time.

"Come on, man. I know you must remember something, otherwise you wouldn't have said he was 'fun'," said Sam, determined to get his brother to spill. He knew better than anyone how guarded Dean could be, especially when it came to the memories he held closest.

"You know I'm not big on the caring and sharing thing, man," Dean said, desperate to get out of the conversation before it turned too sentimental.

"Come on, Dean. I haven't seen Dad in over _three years_," Sam emphasized. "I've been angry at him for a long time. I just...I want to hear about when things were good."

"'Were' being the operative word, right?" said Dean obstinately. "You mean pre-1983. 'Cos you don't think there were ever good times just the three of us, right? You think that we were always miserable with Dad?" He was answered with silence. "It wasn't all bad, Sammy. And you know it. Remember that year we went to Two Lakes State Park? We would've been about nine and thirteen? We all went swimming at the lake and Dad taught us how to fish?"

"...and then ditched us there to hunt a shifter in town," said Sam bitterly.

"After spending half the day there," said Dean defensively. "_And _he remembered to leave the sunscreen. He was only gone a couple of hours."

"But then he got back, totally _flipped out_ and read us the riot act just for talking to that park ranger," said Sam. "Heaven forbid we had any adult supervision."

Dean let out a deep breath. "I guess it can't hurt to tell you now...you were still new to the whole 'monsters are real thing' and we didn't want to freak you out, but Sammy...that thing _was _the Shifter. Dad was mad because we trusted a uniform and almost followed it off to God knows where. It figured out Dad was after it and chose to chase down us instead. Dad thought we'd be safe and could have a fun, normal day at the lake...he had the thing cornered, it escaped. He followed it to the lake, found us just in time, sent us to the car and took the thing out with a silver bullet. It was close, Sammy—that thing almost got us. It was one of the few times I saw Dad was actually scared."

"Oh," said Sam quietly, looking down at his hands as he re-processed a child memory. "So Dad had a reason for being an ass."

"He usually does," Dean smirked, turning his attention back to his burger.

"You still haven't answered my question," said Sam, prompting, "About what Dad was like before?"

"You're not gonna let me eat in peace until I tell you, are you?" asked Dean in annoyance.

Sam shook his head. "Nope."

"Fine," Dean snapped, relenting. "I'll try to think of something." He leaned back in his seat and looking up towards the street lamp, closing his eyes as his mind transported him to another time and place. A slow smile crept over his face. "I remember...Dad used to work at the garage all day, and no matter how tired he was when he got home, he'd always rough house with me or play catch until Mom called us in for dinner. The end."

"...Is that all you've got?" Sam said after a long pause, thoroughly unimpressed. "That's all you can remember?"

"Shhh," Dean snapped, opening his eyes long enough to scowl reproachfully at Sam before continuing, "Give me a break, it was a long time ago...wait, I've got one. Dad used to tell me these stories before bed, things he'd just make up on the spot. And they were funny, too, Sammy. Completely ridiculous. One time I laughed so hard I peed myself."

"Huh," Sam's eyebrows raised. "I never pictured Dad as ever having an imagination," he said, allowing this new and unexpected piece of information about his father to sink in. "Or being funny..."

"You'd better believe it, Sammy. Dad was a regular comedian with bedtime stories. Oh, and once or twice a month, he would take me to the toy store. He'd tell me I could pick out anything I wanted—something for me and something for you, since you were too little to pick for yourself. Man, Sammy—we were _spoiled. _I remember Mom not being too happy about how much he spent sometimes, but we never returned anything. It was _awesome_."

Sam thought back to interviewing his Dad's old business, partner, Mike Guenther. _"He doted on those kids..." _he'd said, and Dean had just provided proof. Sam realized Dean was onto a new story, and tore himself from his own thoughts to tune back in.

"...and sometimes he'd call in sick, just to hang out with us and Mom for the day—he could get away with that, since he was one of the owners. We'd go to the park a lot. Mom would push you in your stroller, Dad would lift me up on his shoulders..." Dean trailed off, his eyes sad. He looked at Sam like he'd forgotten he was there. Dean cleared his throat and coughed. "Is that enough for you?" he said gruffly, and Sam could practically see Dean's defensive walls rising up and encasing him again.

Sam desperately wanted to hear more, was drinking in every story. He decided a good tactic was to shift the attention away from Dean. "What about me? Do you remember anything about me?"

"Not so much, Sammy," said Dean. "You were just a baby. You didn't do much of anything—you couldn't even crawl yet. All you did was eat, sleep, cry and poop, dude." He smirked at his brother. "Guess some things never change, huh?"

"Shut up," Sam shoved Dean's arm.

"Oh, come on...!" Dean yelled, as Sam's push made the slice of tomato and bacon in his second burger slip out onto his lap, both dripping in ketchup and mayonnaise. With a groan of disgust, Dean flicked the tomato out the open window and folded the bacon into his mouth.

"Anything else?" Sam prompted, as Dean scrubbed his jeans with a napkin.

"You really think I'm gonna tell you more now? I should toss your salad for that, right out the window," Dean glared. "You were floppy, okay?"

"I was floppy..." Sam repeated slowly, frowning.

"Yeah. You were too floppy to play with. You were like a rag doll. Your head would roll all over the place. You couldn't even sit up on your own. I was only allowed to hold you when I was sitting down and Mom or Dad was watching. Oh, and you'd try to eat anything that wasn't nailed down. You were a regular Freddy Fast Fingers. Dad had to do the baby Heimlich on you once when you got your mitts on one of my LEGO's. Can't say that I remember much more than that."

"Do you remember how Dad was around me?" Sam pressed. "I know I was young, but did he—"

"Dude," Dean moaned, his head sinking onto the steering wheel, "You are _killing _me with all this touchy feely nostalgic stuff..."

"I'm sorry, Dean," said Sam, deadpan. "It must really suck remembering anything about your parents from when you still had a normal, happy life."

Dean sat up straighter, staring hard at Sam. Sam glared back with equal intensity, eyes slightly narrowed. "Fine. You wanna know about Dad? Dad was a sucker for you, from the moment they brought you home from the hospital. In fact, if I remember right, he was the one that first started calling you Sammy."

"He was?" said Sam, unable to hide his surprise.

Dean nodded. "Dude, you were_ such_ a Daddy's boy. Whenever anyone else besides Mom was holding you, well, sometimes her too—if you saw Dad walk by, you'd lunge for him—almost fell on your head a few times. You just wanted Dad, I guess. You guys were tight. Dad was just...different then. He was happier, carefree. He laughed more, smiled more. Not having revenge on the brain makes all the difference, I guess."

"This is all so weird to hear," said Sam, shaking his head. He couldn't remember the last time he'd considered him and his Dad to be "tight", as Dean said—if ever. It was hard to remember anything besides the tumultuous years when he was a teenager. "I don't—I can't imagine Dad ever being like you remember him."

"I'm sorry you don't remember the old Dad like I do, Sammy," said Dean solemnly. "He changed, man, after Mom. But can you blame him? That sorta grief does things to a guy..."

"No," Sam admitted, thinking of all the ways Jessica's death had already changed him. He was on the road with Dean for one thing, hunting—when he had sworn to put that life behind him forever, and he was actively looking for his father instead of running in the other direction like his instincts usually told him to. "I guess not. It's just...it sounds like he actually used to be a _good _dad. I guess that's what really freaks me out."

"He still is, Sammy," said Dean, looking surprised. "I mean, I'd never in a million years expect him to win Father of the Year or anything. It's just that the game changed for him. After Mom...being a good dad didn't mean making sure we had ideal circumstances anymore or the hot new toy every month with go-faster stripes. It meant keeping us safe. That's what was most important, what came before anything else. And hey, he must not have done that bad of a job. We're here, we're alive—"

"We're oh-so-well-adjusted," said Sam, rolling his eyes.

"Hey, we could be worse," said Dean. "The things we saw and did growing up, I think we grew up pretty close to normal, considering."

"Dean, what about our lives has ever been normal?" Sam laughed in spite of himself. "What about _us_ is normal? We're pretty much as dysfunctional as they come."

"Yeah, well, most people don't deal with the same kind of crap we do," said Dean. "A little dysfunction is to be expected. Some 'normal' people had it worse than we did. Remember what you said when you met Max? About how we were lucky to have Dad? Those evil sons of bitches out there were Dad's punching bags, not us."

"Okay, that's one thing I'll give him," Sam relented. "But that doesn't excuse everything else. The way he left us alone, ordered us around, turned us into the perfect little soldiers—"

Dean put up his hands to stop Sam. "Again, Sam—circumstances—different. Cut Dad some slack. He never left us high and dry, he always came back, and the things he taught us have saved our butts more times than I can count. Things were tough, Sammy, but you know Dad did—"

"—the best he could, I know," Sam finished the recitation.

Dean looked annoyed at being interrupted. "The guy had his priorities right, okay? That's all I'm saying. Keeping us safe and together as a family was more important than future therapy bills."

Something Dean had said resonated with Sam. "Priorities...safety and belonging before esteem..." he muttered to himself in a moment of self-revelation, thinking back to a Psychology class he had taken at Stanford.

"Say what now?" a baffled Dean said, leaning in towards Sam.

"Maslow's Pyramid," Sam explained. "It's about how people need their basic needs fulfilled like having food, sleep, and sex before they can focus on things like job security and personal achievement—"

"I think that one passed me by, Sammy," said Dean, starting the car. "But I like the sound of it. Let's rent it at the next Blockbuster we see."

Sam laughed silently with a single shake of his head, figuring there was no point trying to explain Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to his brother, especially since his college experience and Dean's perception of it being abandonment made it a sensitive topic for the brothers. So Sam decided to bring up the other question that was on his mind.

"Dean, do you think things would've been different for us if Mom had died a different way?"

Dean almost hit the curb as he turned out of the parking lot. "What the hell are you talking about, Sammy?" he asked, a hint of anger flaring up in his question, or whenever Sam brought up their mother on any day apart from the anniversaries of her birth and death, the two designated days when their mother wasn't a taboo subject. Sam found it much easier to talk about his mother; he didn't even remember her. But for Dean and his Dad, the pain from her loss still cut deep. Not to mention their shared habit of closing off wherever emotions were involved.

Sam rephrased his question carefully, so as not to rile his brother up further. "Do you think our lives would have been different if Mom had died of something normal and boring, like cancer or, I don't know...a brain hemorrhage?"

"I dunno, Sam," said Dean, gritting his teeth as he floored it down the empty side street. "I've imagined what it would be like if Mom was still_ alive_, but never alternate ways for her to have died! What the hell's wrong with you?"

"Just hear me out, Dean," said Sam calmly. "Imagine that Mom had died from something unpreventable, and sudden—where no one could be blamed—no nurses or doctors, nothing supernatural. Just something out of the blue. Do you think Dad would still be like he is now, if there was nothing to get revenge against?"

"Knowing Dad, he'd track down the Reaper that took her and demand he bring Mom back, or threaten to kill the Reaper himself," Dean smirked at the thought. "He'd probably find a way, too."

"But say Dad never learned anything about the supernatural world, or hunting. Say that Mom died, and we had a funeral, and kept on going—just Dad and the two of us."

"Where are you going with this, Sammy?" Dean snapped.

Sam took a deep breath. "I know Dad would never get over losing Mom, but if he was just able to mourn her normally, and there was no huge mystery behind her death, or his need to get revenge on what killed her was just nonexistent...how do you think our lives would be different?"

"We wouldn't be having this stupid conversation right now for one thing," Dean said, annoyed.

"No, come on, man. Amuse me. Do you think we'd still be living in Lawrence?"

Dean actually considered this question for a moment. "I don't think so. Even if the house wasn't destroyed...I don't think Dad would want to stay there without Mom. I know I wouldn't. It was just feel...I dunno. Empty. Wrong. I still think we'd have moved."

"Okay. But not every other month like we did growing up, right?" Sam pressed. "We probably would have moved once, escaped the memories, got a fresh start somewhere new, and stayed there. Right?"

"Probably," said Dean non-commitedly. "I'm not the best at figuring out the ins and outs of your little alternate universe thing. Can we just be done with this conversation now?"

"Not yet," said Sam, as Dean groaned and hung his head, hitting it against the steering wheel three times. Sam proceeded with caution. "I know Mom was the love of Dad's life...do you think there's any chance he ever would have remarried after her?" Sam asked, though he felt he already knew what Dean's answer would be—the same as his.

"No way," said Dean vehemently, waving his arm out in a defiant gesture that almost hit Sam in the face. "He'd know that NO ONE could replace Mom. The guy still wears his wedding ring twenty-three years later! There'd be no point even looking for someone as amazing as she was. Dad would rather be alone the rest of his life and raise us by himself. I can't believe you'd even ask that."

"Sorry," Sam apologized, meekly. "It's just something to consider, if things had been different. Which_ is _what we're doing."

"I wish we weren't," Dean muttered darkly.

Ignoring him, Sam said, "I know Dad sold his share of the garage to Mike when he moved from Lawrence. What d'you think he'd be doing for work if he wasn't hunting?"

"Probably still turning wrenches in some other city," Dean responded, casting a half-glance over his shoulder before merging onto the interstate, still fuming from Sam's last imagined scenario. "Dad would have to be working full-time to support us, and I'd still be stuck watching your sorry ass all the time." He smirked at Sammy. "Weird to think of Dad punching a clock and getting in an honest day's work instead of hustling pool or running credit card scams, huh?"

"Yeah. That is weird," Sam admitted, imagining his Dad stumbling in the door at the end of the day, covered in grease and oil instead of blood and dirt. "Dad having a real job...it's like something out of the Twilight Zone."

"Dad had a few jobs," said Dean. "Not all of our money was ill-gotten. Remember that construction job he had in Albuquerque? Must've been like, '91?"

"Yeah," said Sam slowly. "Remember how I tried to build a bird house with some of the scrap wood he got us?"

"How could I forget?" Dean laughed. "That thing was lethal. Looked like something out of a Tim Burton movie. I also remember you played a sunbeam in the school play there," Dean smirked. "You were so adorable."

"Shut up," Sam muttered, his cheeks coloring at the memory.

"What was that song they had you sing, again?" Dean baited. "'I'm Walking on Sunshine', was it?"

"'You _Are _My Sunshine'," Sam corrected.

"Aw, Sammy," said Dean, putting his hand over his heart. "I didn't know you felt that way."

"What about holidays?" Sam interrupted, desperate for a change of conversation. "Do you think Dad would have actually made an effort?"

"He did, Sammy. Well, when he could," Dean amended. "It's not like we were ever rolling in dough. But he tried. I think there were just too many bad memories around the holidays for Dad to feel all that festive. But that's okay. So what if we had a Charlie Brown tree instead of one straight out of a Martha Stewart catalog, or didn't get very cool new toy that we'd just get tired of in a week, anyway? We always got something. I'm not complaining about us skipping out on all that commercialism bull crap. So we stayed in on Halloween watching TV specials instead of going trick-or-treating. Dad still got us discount candy the next day. All of the sugar rush and none of the work. I thought it was a pretty sweet deal. So what if we were unconventional? I think it's awesome that we did our own thing."

"So you never wish we could have had, say, a traditional, normal sit-down Thanksgiving, then?" Sam asked. "One that wasn't served up in a pit stop diner?"

"Hell no," said Dean adamantly. "Are you kidding me? Dad couldn't cook to save his life. Anything more difficult than soup—forget it! I was totally cool with the Thanksgiving special at Mama Janer's. So long as I had my slice of pumpkin pie, I was golden. We dodged a real bullet there, Sammy."

"Okay, I'll give you that one," Sam smirked. "Eating out all those years instead of having Dad cook probably reduced our risk of getting food poisoning by at _least _sixty percent."

"At least," Dean agreed with a chuckle. "But what about the Fourth of July? Those were usually pretty fun. I think it's the only holiday where we managed to capture the intended spirit of the day."

"Dad being a Veteran definitely helped," Sam agreed. "He's always been patriotic. It was pretty cool when we used to always celebrate the Fourth at Bobby's."

"Oh yeah," Dean laughed. "Camped out in his backyard, barbequing, Dad and Bobby drinking beer while they watched us play with the kiddie fireworks—_away _from the salvage yard."

"Yeah, I remember that," Sam smiled fondly at the memory. "And when it got dark we'd drive down to that big empty parking lot and Bobby and Dad would light off the good stuff."

"Dude, remember that year we got into the fireworks early?" Dean said animatedly. "We must've been nine and thirteen—and we were shooting Roman Candles at each other?"

"We were so stupid," Sam laughed. "I lost my eyebrows and you had second degree burns on your hands and arms, remember?"

"How could I forget?" said Dean, wincing. "I still have the scars."

"Dad was so pissed," Sam said, shaking his head. "Remember the lecture we got when he was patching you up? When he 'officially and forever revoked' our 'pyrotechnics privileges?' He said they made us lose all respect for firearms."

"He wasn't wrong," Dean said, recalling the time he and Sam had burned down a field whilst having their own fireworks display just a few years after the Roman Candles incident. "Those were the days, Sammy. Sometimes I wish we could just go back in time to how things used to be."

"I don't," said Sam flatly. "Dad dragging us all over the country chasing hunts, ordering us around—his way or the highway." Sam laughed bitterly. "Going to Stanford was the first time I actually felt like I was living my own life. Making my own choices."

"Oh, you made your choice, alright," said Dean tersely. He'd been raised to know that family always came first. And after Sam left, a rift was created between his brother and father. Dean had been stuck in the middle, torn, but ultimately stayed with his father, carrying on their nearly twenty-year mission that Sam had chosen to abandon, along with his family.

"You could have left too, Dean, you know," said Sam carefully. "You were twenty-three when I left home—old enough to make your own decisions. You didn't have to stay with Dad."

"Yes, I did. Because I know my place," said Dean fiercely. "Dad needed me, Sammy. He needs _us_."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Yeah, that's why he's been ignoring our calls all year and totally avoiding us..."

"Look, we don't know why he's not letting us in on the hunt. Maybe he wants to find out more about this demon first. We don't know what he—"

"Why do you always feel the need to justify everything Dad does instead of just acknowledging he treated us like baggage, Dean?" Sam demanded. "Our childhoods sucked. But we're both adults now. We get to choose where we go from here. Deep down, you can't honestly tell me that you never wanted more out of life than this."

"So I should have gone to college like you, Sammy? Is that what you're saying?" said Dean, not taking his eyes off the road. "I don't have dreams beyond my station. There's four things I'm good at: fixing cars, picking up chicks, ganking monsters and pulling your ass out of the fire—literally, on more than one occasion. Those IV league schools aren't interested in a high school dropout whose biggest credentials are being able to field strip a Browning in ten seconds flat. And you know what? To hell with all of them. I wouldn't want to go to any of them, anyway. I don't belong there."

"Dean..."

" I don't have a massive geek brain like you do, Sammy," Dean shrugged. "Even if we were in your crazy, flowery alternate universe, the only business I would have at somewhere like Stanford would be driving you home for summer vacation."

Sam shook his head in disbelief. "How can you think so little of yourself, Dean? You're way smarter than you give yourself credit for. You've got to do what's right for you. It's your life, not Dad's."

"Thanks, Mikey. But I don't need a Goonies pep talk right now," said Dean tightly.

"Look, we got screwed over with school because of how much we moved around. It wasn't fair that I had to graduate a year behind everyone else my age, and it was Dad's fault that you had to get a GED because you missed so much school."

"It wasn't that, man," said Dean. "I dropped out because my grades were so low Senior year that I wouldn't have been able to graduate, anyway. So why go?"

"Yeah," said Sam, exasperatedly. "That's pretty much the point I was trying to make, Dean."

"But it wasn't on Dad," Dean insisted. "We only usually hunted on weekends, remember? I _went _to school most of the time. But I'd stay for attendance and then slip out of class to get a different kind of education," Dean smirked. "Behind the bleachers, in supply closets, empty classrooms..." Sam rolled his eyes in disgust. "I didn't do my homework, I watched TV instead of studying...it was mostly on me, dude. Dad wasn't too happy about me quitting school, but he didn't make a big deal of it. Just told me I had to get my equivalency."

"I never understood that. Why?" Sam's eyes narrowed. "He never seemed to care about school before. Hunting was always top priority." Sam said, thinking of the number of times he'd done homework in the backseat by flashlight.

"He always said the hunting lifestyle would be temporary," Dean reasoned. "Not too many places are big on hiring high school dropouts. Or so I've heard. It's not like I've ever had a real job. Dad's always known you have the brains to become anything you want, and he trained me up to be a wrench monkey. Probably wanted to make sure I'd have something to fall back on, I guess. "

"That doesn't make any sense, Dean. If Dad wants us to have a backup plan, then how come he was so pissed off when I went to school?" Sam demanded, fuming. "If that was true, couldn't he have just been happy for me—supportive? Not telling me get out of there and stay gone!"

"Do you really think he meant that?" Dean said. "How many times...Dad never wrote you off. He kept an eye on you. He kept you on his insurance when we renewed it. I know he wanted to talk to you and make things right, but he was too stubborn to ever admit it—"

"Well, maybe if he didn't have so many of his own issues—"

"Yeah, Sammy. Dad has issues," Dean said hotly. "And one of them is a history of having his family walk out on him!" Sam sat in silence, staring out his window. "Why do you think he dragged us along with him everywhere he went instead of just leaving us with someone else to raise us? He didn't want us to go through the same thing he did when his old man bailed out on him."

"I guess I never really thought of it like that," said Sam, eyes downcast.

Dean tore his eyes off Sam. "We needed you, Sammy. It was never the same without you around. I just...I want us all to be together again. You do still want to find Dad, don't you?"

"Of course I do," said Sam quietly.

"Then what's with the hypothetical and at times hostile trip down memory lane?"

Sam let out a long, slow breath. "We've been on the road constantly. I guess I've just had time to do a lot of thinking. About everything. I don't regret going to school, Dean. And I'm sorry about what it did to you and Dad. It's what was right for me at the time. But things changed. Right now, finding Dad, killing the thing that killed Mom and Jess...that's what's important. I guess I'm just trying to sort out some of my own issues with Dad in my head _before_ we actually find him."

"Or he finds us, more likely, with the luck we've been having," Dean muttered. "But yeah. I guess I'd rather have you vent off steam to me than let all that angst explode when you see Dad again."

"Do you still think he's okay?" Sam asked, a hint of anxiety in his voice. "We haven't heard from him since Burkitsville."

"He's fine," said Dean with confident dismissal. He was so closely attuned to his father, and knew that if something were to happen to him, he'd feel it, no matter the distance. "He always is."

Dean's calm assurance assuaged Sam's fears as effectively as it did when they were children. "I just hope we find him soon."

"Me, too, Sammy," said Dean quietly. "Me, too."

The Winchester brothers both lapsed into silence, lost in their respective thoughts as the Impala carried them along another endless highway, each hoping that their nearly year-long search for their father would soon come to an end. In the meantime, they would keep doing their job: saving people, hunting things...

The family business.

…...

AN: References to the incident with the park ranger shifter, John's construction job in Albuquerque, and Sam being a sunbeam in the school play were all real stories taken from _John Winchester's Journal._

I hope you enjoyed, dear reader :)


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